Rob Reiner

If you, 60 years ago, were at the Priscilla Beach Theatre in Massachusetts and watched a teenager on stage in the play “Enter Laughing,” you might have been thinking less about seeing a star in the making and more about nepotism.

The play was based on a novel by Carl Reiner. And the teenaged actor was his son, Rob.

By now, I’m sure you’ve read about the shocking and unbelievable deaths of Reiner and his wife in their California home.

Rob Reiner will always be associated with that breakthrough situation comedy All in the Family as Mike Stivic, son-in-law of Archie Bunker, despite his later successes directing This is Spinal Tap (and its recent sequel) and When Harry Met Sally... (and other films).

As improbable as it sounds, Reiner hoped, at least for a while, to be a stand-up comic. Even more improbable: he teamed in 1967 with Larry Bishop, the son of Joey.

Jeanne Miller of the San Francisco Examiner thought they were a bit green. Her review, published in December 28, 1967 partly read:

Larry Bishop, son of comedian Joey Bishop and Rob Reiner, son of Carl Reiner, a Renaissance man of the theater, are making their night club debut this week at the hungry i. The youngsters, both 20, are articulate, charming and attractive, with a strong determination to make their own way.
QUIET YOUTH
Bishop, a rather quiet, long-haired youth, said that his father had discouraged him right from the start.
"He knows how tough it is to get a foothold in show business," young Bishop said. "I know how he wishes that I had some other bent. We feel very differently about the war and a lot of other important things."
Reiner, on the other hand, said that his novelist-playwright-actor father had been extremely encouraging about his venture into the precarious world of show business.
COMPETITIVE THING
“My father wants me to do just what I need to do to be happy, even if it doesn't work out the way I want," he said. "Larry and I write all our own material. And we prefer to be known as comedy actors rather than comedians. We feel that the world we live in supplies enough material for the tragi-comic approach which is important today. There is no need, as far as we are concerned, for a competitive thing with our fathers."
The youngsters have a style and stage presence which is both appealing and magnetic. And perhaps, with time and experience, they will be able to captivate an audience.
UNEVEN
But at the present time, their presentation is so un-even in its delivery and so sophomoric in its content that one must regretfully admit that the youngsters' last names are their saving grace professionally.



The partnership didn’t last. This publicity story found its way into the Lansing State Journal of Dec. 21, 1968:

Rob Reiner: Off To Early Start
"He has his talent, I have mine. They're not the same. I'm not trading on his name."
So says Rob Reiner of himself and his talented father, writer-producer-actor-comedian Carl Reiner.
Young Reiner is a new addition this season to the 12-man writing staff of "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour."
Though only 21, Reiner already has been "paying his dues," as they say in show business, for several years. Following his graduation from Beverly Hills High School, he took a summer apprenticeship at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pa. For three months, he built scenery and painted backdrops without pay —not even room or board. His total acting experience was performing one line in one play.
The next summer, after a year at UCLA, he joined the resident company of the Priscilla Beach Theater in Plymouth, Mass. There, his acting exposure was somewhat better. Reiner appeared in seven of their 12 plays and received the grand salary of $15 a week plus room and board.
After a second year of college, Reiner and five of his contemporaries, including Joey Bishop's son, Larry, formed "The Session," a comedy improvisation group. They performed together for one year in nightclubs and on network television.
Following the group's breakup, Reiner and Larry Bishop formed an act and played at the famed “hungry i” in San Francisco and on numerous television shows.
During his nightclub exposure, Reiner met Tommy Smothers, and later, when he developed an idea for a television pilot, he submitted it to the comedian.
Smothers was sufficiently impressed to give Reiner a writing job on the summer replacement series for "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." When the summer show ended, Reiner was added to the staff of the fall show.

Reiner made his film debut in Halls of Anger (1970). Despite that, and having a key role in an historic television show, acting doesn’t seem to have been his goal, as we read in Dan Lewis’ syndicated column. This appeared in the Shreveport Times on Feb. 20, 1972:

Rob Reiner’s Enjoying Success
Nice things are happening to Rob Reiner, even if Archie Bunker calls him a "Meathead."
For one thing, people recognize Rob on the street. He went into a theater in New York and caused quite a stir. "I signed more than 300 autographs," Rob said proudly.
For another thing, when he thinks he has a worthwhile television project, networks listen to him. As a result, he's writing a script for a new series for which ABC and Metromedia have forked up $15,000 development money. The series would be titled "The Super" and focuses on a superintendent in a small (maybe 20 units) apartment in New York. Richard Castellano, who got an Oscar nomination for "Lovers and Other Strangers" last year, will star in the series if it goes.
Rob is faced with decisions on movie scripts, ("One would be shot in Rome this summer," Rob confided).
And he also gets requests for civic endeavors such as the one which brought him to New York this trip. "I came East to tape a program about venereal disease for the Community Relations project," said Rob, whose Saturday night encounters with the bigoted Archie Bunker in "All in the Family" have made him one of the big heroes of young people today, and also a big star in the eyes of 62 per cent of TV viewers who tune in their sets on Saturday.
He repeated, "62 per cent watched our last show — more than ever watched a single half-hour situation comedy show in TV history."
He enjoys the success. "Hey, look, I'm staying here (the new ultra fashionable Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South)," he said, rolling his eyes around the room, and looking out over Central Park. “The last time I stayed in a New York hotel, I hate to tell you what it looked like. And I'm paying my way, except for two nights CBS is picking up."
The show's incredible success this year doesn't mystify Rob ("Everybody calls me Bob, and I hate it," he complained). He acknowledged that he didn't give the show much chance to last beyond the first 13 weeks when it went on in midseason last year. "As it turned out, people we thought would like it — the liberals — don't like it. These people are very protective of minorities. They talk about attitudes of the show.
"But I get angry when people ask about attitudes. Who cares? People are enjoying the show — a lot of people judging from the ratings. The big thing is that Archie is living in a prison — his own — and the more prejudices he has the more imprisoned he becomes. The hoity-toity liberals don't like it."
But, Rob contended, "All in the Family" is real, and that's what makes it work. "Everybody who tunes in either IS the family, or knows people like this family," he declared.
There has been some criticism that many people like the show because they agree with Archie and see in him a vehicle in which these feelings are projected to the masses. "People who agree with Archie are too close-minded to see what we're really doing with Archie. We make him a buffoon every time."
Ironically, Rob Reiner was first offered the role five years ago, when two pilots were made for ABC. Both were rejected and the series was tabled. When CBS agreed to pick it up, producer Norman Lear recalled Rob.
In the intervening five years, Rob did a number of things. He came out of high school with a taste for show business after acting in a school play. "That was the first time in my life I had friends," Rob recalled "The family (his father is Carl Reiner, sometimes actor, mostly writer and creator of the "New Dick Van Dyke Show," director and producer) kicked around for years and we never really settled anywhere long enough for me to make friends until we got to California. The friends I made were in this play."
That summer he studied acting and met Larry Bishop, son of comic Joey Bishop, and a young man named Phil Mishkin. The three started an improvisation theater, the first in the Los Angeles area. Later, Rob and Bishop broke away and formed a night-club act. Tall, stoop-shouldered, Rob fussed with his Fu Manchu mustache as he recounted his life history. "Larry decided he didn't like to work clubs, so we broke up, too," Rob recalled.
From then, Reiner, showing the same writing interest his father, has joined "The Committee." another improvisational group, and also wrote for Glen Campbell and the Smothers Brothers television shows.
He also appeared in about 20 situation comedy segments on television series, a number of them for shows produced by Gary [sic] Marshall. He started going with Gary's sister, Penny.
"We lived together for a year and a half," he revealed. "Then we got married about a year ago."
He considered the writing stint with the Smothers Brothers the big thing in his career until "All in the Family." Along the way, he also reteamed with Mishkin. "Phil had a project called 'An Evening of Dirty Movies,' a theatrical production which I directed and co-produced. It was an Equity company and got incredible reviews. But financially, it was a bust."
Just before "All in the Family," Rob was writing for Andy Griffith's new series, "Headmaster." and starred in one segment as a 23-year-old psychology teacher. "Norman (Lear) saw it and called me when CBS decided to go ahead with 'All in the Family."'
The name of that segment, which Rob wrote, was "Valerie Has an Emotional Gestalt for the Teacher."
Rob claims he wants to keep his hand in acting, but he really plans to concentrate on writing, directing and producing. "The Super" television project is being coscripted with Mishkin.
"I'd like to act in one picture a year to make the kind of money that will then permit me to produce my kind of pictures," he explained.
But he had one word of caution. "Everything I said about what's coming up is all 'maybe.' If nothing develops, you'll see me on the unemployment line during hiatus."

The Super wasn’t, as one critic put it. And Reiner finally walked away from All in the Family in 1978. At the time, wife Penny told Chris Stoehr of the Knight-Ridder papers: “He didn’t know what else to do with Mike, as a character” and “Rob, for a while, got depressed about playing the same role. It was all okay until about the fourth or fifth year, I think, and he went through a time of really wanting to get out of the series.”

When he did get out, he continued his string of successes. But if he had done nothing else than play an iconic character like Mike Stivic, the other side of the coin of conservative bigot Archie Bunker, that would have been enough to rank him with a rather small group of select actors.